Weekly Fan Polls

[ModeratorMike]

Thought we should have a thread to discuss the fan polls, and how they fluctuate, throughout the season this year.

Looks like it's pretty clear who the favorite is in UIL D1. For the first time since we started the fan polls, a team has received all the votes, with at least 10 votes being cast.

Also, we have a very tight race for first place in UIL D2. It's actually all tied up at the time of this post.

There's also a tight race for first in TAPPS D1, but few voters so still a lot of potential for changes to be made there.

TAPPS D2 and D3 have teams in first that have pulled away a little bit but, again, very few votes so still plenty of time for huge shake-ups there.

In TAIAO, there is only one voting member in D1 and D2 and only two voting members in D3. It'll be interesting to see if we get more voters there as the year goes on. I'm not sure those teams' fans realize this is happening.

Also, I'd like to thank @Pdevitt13 for this idea again. If not for him, this probably wouldn't be a thing and I think it's been interesting the last few years to keep up with this.

 

[ModeratorMike]

Good to see the jokesters are back this season.

 

[ModeratorMike]

Well, another year is here y'all! With that comes all the fun of us getting to vote on, pick, and discuss what we think will happen all throughout the season and part of that is voting in the fan polls. It's been open for a few days now, and (once again) the jokesters are already it.

That said, I'd like to encourage all of you who are fans, players and (especially) coaches to take the time to fill out the fan polls each week, even if only for the primary division that you're most interested in. When folks who take it seriously take the time to fill the out, it really is a nice tool to help us see what the fans of the game think of the upcoming weeks, and it's always neat to see how those fan poll rankings compare with what The Toy thinks will happen, especially after the first several weeks when The Toy really starts to get dialed in and is more and more leaving my initial thoughts out of it.

This season, today actually, I've made a small change to the main fan polls page. Now when you're viewing the fan poll results page, you'll also be able to see what each team's division rank is according to The Toy. The will help us quickly see how different the people's rankings are vs The Toy, without having to go back and forth on different pages.

Once again I'd like to thank @Pdevitt13 for starting these fan polls years ago, and handing it over to me to keep it going here on the site. It really has been a neat tool to gauge member's opinions on how the season is progressing, and how the top 10 is fluctuating as the season goes on.

 

[ModeratorMike]

I don't mean any disrespect to the teams by saying this, and I truly do hope that a lot of these teams prove me wrong because there's not much I enjoy more than seeing a team battle their way up the rankings and turn some heads...but I think we (meaning those of us who actually follow and enjoy the game of six-man football) could almost all agree that, at this point in the season, this is a great of example of how not to do the fan poll rankings...

This is from an actual voter in the UIL DII fan polls already this year. I've got a good mind to just block folks who do things like this from voting. It's one thing to put your team at the top, or to purposely leave off certain teams if you absolutely refuse to vote for your team's rival, but it's something else all together to just make a mockery of the entire idea behind this thing...

 

[6manfanNate]

Smh

 

[Tigerfan85]

I don't mean any disrespect to the teams by saying this, and I truly do hope that a lot of these teams prove me wrong because there's not much I enjoy more than seeing a team battle their way up the rankings and turn some heads...but I think we (meaning those of us who actually follow and enjoy the game of six-man football) could almost all agree that, at this point in the season, this is a great of example of how not to do the fan poll rankings...

This is from an actual voter in the UIL DII fan polls already this year. I've got a good mind to just block folks who do things like this from voting. It's one thing to put your team at the top, or to purposely leave off certain teams if you absolutely refuse to vote for your team's rival, but it's something else all together to just make a mockery of the entire idea behind this thing...


View attachment 6184

Marked safe from sabotaging fan polls

 

[Pdevitt13]

@Mike can the votes be publicized so people messing up the polls can be held accountable?

 

[ModeratorMike]

@Mike can the votes be publicized so people messing up the polls can be held accountable?

I've considered that, but I don't want to cause people to quit voting completely. Also, this year especially because I plan to start showing a "Coaches poll" for all divisions that have at least five coaches vote. For example, if five UIL DI coaches (that have their accounts associated with the team here on the site) vote in the UIL DI fan polls, their votes are also stored separately to be shown in a separate results page. That, though, will only be shown for any divisions where there are at least five coaches who voted. I certainly wouldn't want to publicize coach's votes in the polls, for obvious reasons.

I think the best way to handle it is just for me to build something into the system that will let me just block certain people from voting. It's usually less than a handful of people who do this in any given season. Enough so that it rarely makes a difference, but it is still a little annoying.

 

[kdstew3]

I think the best way to handle it is just for me to build something into the system that will let me just block certain people from voting. It's usually less than a handful of people who do this in any given season. Enough so that it rarely makes a difference, but it is still a little annoying.

Repeat offenders ought to be easy enough to start weeding out, should you go that route.

 

[Texlonghorn75]

Is it possible their crystal ball is somewhat cloudy? Kicking the culprits off the deer lease would be more punitive. Just stating the obvious. Lol

 

[ModeratorMike]

In addition to expanding the fan polls to now include a separate coaches poll, I've also made a few other changes to the fan polls today.

The first thing is that your previous week's votes will now automatically populate the list when you go to vote in the next week. So, for those of you who voted in the fan polls this week, when you go to submit your votes next week, your list will be populated with all the teams you chose this week. I've done this just to help save time having to re-list all the teams again, assuming most of your picks will remain in your top 10.

The next thing I did was add a new drag and drop system for ordering the teams. I thought this might make it much easier, especially in subsequent weeks where your previous week's votes are pre-loaded, to re-order the teams to your new order. Again, hopefully this will help save you the time of having to re-type the entire list, just to move a specific team up or down, if you decide something is slightly out of order.

Hopefully both of these things will make things easier for y'all. As always, if there's anything else y'all think of that might make the site better, or easier to use, please let me know. I'm always open to listening to new ideas.